No, Andhra Pradesh DGP did not award only Superintendents of Police from Reddy caste

What is the claim?

On December 16, K.V. Rajendranath Reddy, the Director General Police (DGP) of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, awarded performance medals to 77 police personnel for exhibiting exemplary performance. The DGP Disc’s Awards were presented by the state police chief for the performance of police officers, ranking from Additional Director General (ADG) rank to constables, in 2022.

In this context, a claim is circulating on social media that the Superintendents of police (SP)—police head of a district— whom the DGP awarded medals were all from the Reddy caste. Members of the Reddy caste predominantly inhabit Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana belong to this caste, and so does the DGP of Andhra Pradesh. 

A user on X (formerly Twitter) shared a collage of photos of police officers receiving medals from the DGP with a caption in Telugu, which roughly translates to: “Though there are 26 districts in the state, only 5 SP officers got performance medals, and all are from the same caste." The photo collage has the names of SP officers against their photo. All the officers have the suffix Reddy in their name, thereby implying that only Reddy officers were awarded performance medals. An archived version of this post and similar other ones can be found here and here.

Screenshot of a social media post making the viral claim. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, the viral claim is false. Not all the SPs awarded performance medals are from the Reddy caste. 

What did we find?

We looked for the list of police officers who were awarded medals and came across a thread on X posted by the official account of Andhra Pradesh Police. Apart from visuals from the event, the thread, posted on December 16, carried the list of police officers of various ranks who were presented with the performance medals. 

The list included the names of the police personnel who were awarded medals by the DGP. According to the list, Superintendents of Police of 21 districts of Andhra Pradesh were awarded performance medals, while the other awardees included the Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Inspector General (IG), Deputy Inspector General (DIG), Assistant Inspector General (AIG) level officers among others. Of the 21 SP officers, 5 were awarded the gold and the other silver medals.

Among these 21 Superintendents of Police, six officers— heading the police force of Chittor, SR Nellore, Sri Satya Sai, Palandu, Nandyal, and Tirupati districts— are from the Reddy caste. The names of the officers corresponding to these districts are Rishanth Reddy, Tirumaleswar Reddy, S.V. Madhav Reddy, Y. Ravi Sankar Reddy, K. Raghuveera Reddy, and P. Parameswar Reddy. Among these, while Rishanth Reddy was awarded the gold medal, the other were given silver medals. 

The other 15 Superintendents of Police are a mix of non-Reddy Telugu officers and non-Telugu officers. 

Logically Facts also contacted the Andhra Pradesh Police Headquarters to learn about the selection process for the awards. A key member of the public relations team, who did not wish to be identified, told us that an internal committee had selected the awardees based on parameters such as conviction rates achieved in 2022, maintenance of law and order, and the implementation of women's safety measures.

Andhra Pradesh Police had also issued a clarification on the matter in an X post on December 18. The post, originally written in Telugu, said that the viral claim about the DGP Disc's Awards being awarded on the basis of caste was untrue, and the people posting, sharing, or circulating such false posts were liable for legal action. 

It is, hence, evident that not all the SP officers awarded the performance medals are from the Reddy caste. 

The verdict

It has been wrongly claimed that all the Superintendents of Police awarded performance medals by the DGP of Andhra Pradesh for the year 2022 are from the Reddy caste. only six of the 21 awarded SPs are from this caste. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.